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The 'Sam' in Samplings

Samara Ballen is a writer, tech enthusiast, animal welfare advocate, environmentalist, and LGBT+ ally from Brooklyn, NY. Beyond her true passions, she loves fashion and beauty, science, world travel, and hanging out with her rescue pit bull, Allie. Also other cool stuff.

Friendly and open-minded, but vocal and unapologetic, and a totally serious human, Samara started Samplings to provide a window into the lives, challenges, and realities of trans and gender-nonconforming people by publishing honest and engaging original content.

She also hates writing about herself, which might have been evidenced by the sheer sterility of this bio, had it not obviously been authored by a completely separate and highly regarded individual of notable literary accomplishments, as proven by their exclusive use of the third-person.

Share your thoughts openly in the comments or on social media, as long as love and compassion guide your words. Read and share freely.

Our political landscape has deteriorated into a toxic battleground fought on by two parties that have become polar opposites. Once that ‘R’ or ‘D’ flashes on the screen next to a person’s name most people’s minds go straight to “ally” or “enemy.”

Is there any forum left where well-meaning people who strongly support one party are willing to truly listen to someone who sees things differently, and possibly change their views? Until recently I wasn’t sure. Then I found myself in a room full of conservatives.

“All in all I realized that no amount of career success, intelligence, material wealth, status, peer admiration or experiences would ever make me feel whole if my baseline—who I am—was stifled and neglected.”

You can read the rest of my interview with Rassellino from Fluidity.Love here!

Labels are a powerful aspect of language. They can be useful, but they can also be the source of harm. They can help us understand concepts and find community, but when they’re given too much weight they pose a threat to unity, love and our advancement as a species.

Recent events have demonstrated some of the ugly reverberations stemming from unhealthy fixations on labels within the LGBT+ community, and I share an interesting effect they’ve had on my personal journey to become myself.

I'm a lover. I'm also a lover of human psychology. As I’ve lived and loved, certain things like relationships have peacefully simplified from emotionally charged and complicated experiences into simpler, more practical concepts.

What I’ve found is that all relationships boil down to three fundamental components. And they all need to be in sync for a LTR to work in the long run.

You are responsible for your children, their wellbeing and their upbringing. But it's not your job nor your right as a parent to filter your child's worldview so that they wind up as amplifiers of your own perspective, goals and values.

We can either help our children become well-adjusted, benevolent, free-living humans with great attitudes, or we can contaminate their experience with the negative parts of our own and ensure at the minimum that they start off at a disadvantage.

For trans people, being misgendered is a painful and harrowing experience, and the psychology behind why may not be as simple as one might assume. In this piece I run a hypothetical and use colorful examples to illustrate what it’s like, and hopefully inspire effort amongst everyone, trans or cis, to be conscious and compassionate in the face of a world in which gender identity is no longer guaranteed to be externally observable.

Imagine that one day you wake up looking very much like you do now except in the opposite gender. If you're a cis female, imagine you look in the mirror and see someone who looks like they could be your brother looking back at you. If you're a cis male, imagine you look like a female version of yourself. Now imagine knowing it's permanent.

It's so important that we're able to empathize with and understand each other in this world of chaos and insanity. We are all brothers and sisters trying to survive and find happiness, and both of those things would come so much more easily for all of us if we were able to locate and focus on common ground. If you're with me, read on and let's see if we can bridge the gap.

The iPad is one of my favorite devices ever. It’s versatile, powerful and intuitive. But is it really a full “computer” like Apple is trying to position it? Well, no, it’s not — for what most people expect from a computer anyway. Here’s exactly where it lacks and what Apple needs to do to bridge the gap. And if you’re a lighter user, here’s what it has to offer as your go-to device.

Fear in and of itself isn't a bad thing. In fact if you watch it carefully it can be a compass, pointing you toward exactly what you need to do for yourself and your growth. If you're not afraid to face it, fear can become a tool. It's only our reaction to fear that can ruin us. If we run and hide in the face of fear we give it substance—a body. Fear relies on us to catalyze it into reality, and that catalyst is called shame.

Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable creates a powerful ripple effect. But you have to be willing to do it.

When you read my writing you're essentially hearing from me with commentary and suggestions from The Scientist and all the other unique parts of me. Here’s a rather unfiltered entry on a particular gender quirk from my predominantly intellectual side.

“A caterpillar disappears into its chrysalis until it emerges a beautiful butterfly. Trans people go through their metamorphosis in full view, living day after day in the real world while they transform.”

Discover some confidence-boosting perspectives to help you be your best self through the rough patches.

Becoming environmentally conscious is beyond necessary. The future of our planet depends on all of us becoming accountable for our impact on the world. The good news is it doesn’t have to mean sacrificing convenience or quality of life.